She, in fact, becomes like another daughter. She succumbed to his handsomeness and learns to tolerate his moods. As a widower he marries a woman, Rose, visiting from Scotland. Words of love and understanding are rare. He is a tyrant, grumpy one minute, then playful, then grumpy again. The latter underpins and authorises the former. This is a story about a strict father confident in his position as the head of the house and a God-fearing Catholic.
He has five children: three daughters, Mona, Shiela, and Maggie – and two sons, the estranged eldest, Luke, and the youngest, Michael, still at school. Michael Moran, based largely on McGahern’s own father, is an aging Irish farmer from the north west. You could not successfully trim even one word, nor would you need to add another. No longer, exposed and vulnerable, would she have to chase and harry after happiness. Out of the many false starts her life had made she felt they were witnessing this pure beginning that she would seize and make true. John McGahern’s Amongst Women is an example of good writing. Of course, grammar and syntax are also important but secondarily so. Oh, and a deep understanding and interest in human nature. What makes writing good is an economy of language: clear and apt sentences of time and place plain words, character-building skills via close writing 1 with evocative dialogue and the necessary understanding of the importance of the narrative voice. I had just began reading Amongst Women (1991) and hurried back to it. I was polite and blamed myself for my lack of understanding and appreciation. I then wrote to her to apologise but I was not the reader she was searching for and that I would not be reading the rest. She had created a publishing house in order to publish and promote her work which I thought was very entrepreneurial of her. If I agreed to her request she would send me her eBook free of charge. I assume she had come across this very blog where she obtained my contact details. Recently, I was contacted by a British writer who wanted me to review her recently finished novel. I often think to myself when I hear or read comments about ‘good writing’ so that is good writing, yes, I can see that, but what makes it good? McGahern’s work has universally been praised.
I’m a little bashful to then admit this is the first McGahern work I have read it won’t be my last. “John McGahern is the Irish novelist everyone should read”, says Colm Tóibín and, considered by some as, arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett. And so continues my love-affair with Irish fiction.
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